Dreams are like subatomic particles in being fundamentally unpredictable.

Each dream offers an experience of limitless possibility and spontaneous creativity.

Dreams resist social pressures that threaten the innate freedom of human life.

A curious paradox confronts dream researchers today. New technologies of data analysis allow us to identify large-scale patterns in dream content with more precision than ever before. At the same time, it remains true that each dream is a unique and free creation of the imagination in sleep, spontaneously emergent and incapable of being predicted. In short, we find consistency in general dreaming and wildness in individual dreams.

Although disconcerting to researchers, this paradox is a psychological blessing in disguise, especially for anyone interested in learning about the nature of the human mind and its potential for new growth in even the most perilous of conditions.

Dreams and Subatomic Particles

Those of us who study dreams are now able to make highly accurate predictions about the general patterns in people’s dreams. With a large enough data set, we can identify recurrent patterns in dream content and predict the frequency of their future occurrence, along with their relevance to the dreamer’s waking life. The discovery of these recurrent patterns is a major advance in dream science, refuting the sceptic’s tiresome claim that dreams are nothing more than random nonsense.

However, it also remains true that we cannot predict with the same precision the contents of any particular dream. If someone gave us 100 dream reports,........

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